And here the houseman opened the door and looked at Wilkins; and Wilkins picking up his trunk, stepped through and into the back yard, and then, the door of the basement laundry being open, into the laundry itself. Only the under-laundress was present, which caused him to stiffen as he said coldly: "For Felice!" "The--the poor young lady's maid!" said the laundress, with a sudden snivel. "I'll take it to her room," Wilkins said. "Where will that be, and where will I find the young woman herself?" The under-laundress dried her eyes on one corner of her apron. "I dunno about Felice," she said uncertainly. "Mebbe Mr. Bates--oh, here comes Mr. Bates now." Round, red, highly perturbed, the Dalton butler bustled into the laundry and looked Wilkins up and down. "Trunk for the master?" he asked crisply. "For Felice, the young lady's maid, as I understand," Wilkins said quietly. "Where shall I find her? It's for herself." His calm and superior smile warned Bates not to question an affair that could not possibly concern him--yet the warning missed Bates somehow. He looked sharply at Wilkins and laughed. "You'll not find her here!" said he. "I mean Felice, the maid of----" "I know the one you mean," Bates said briefly. "She's not here and she'll not be here again! She's been dismissed!" "What?" said Wilkins. Bates looked him over sternly, as if to suggest that if he happened to be a friend of Felice he had passed beneath contempt. "She's _went_!" Bates said sourly. "This here house is no place for young Frenchies that wanders the streets at night, believe me. She sneaked in--I dunno what hour this early morning, and she was able to give no account at all of where she'd been. There wasn't no further questions asked; she went, bag and baggage!" One of those mental clouds which had been troubling Anthony since last night came now to engulf the complacent Wilkins. He looked at Bates, as if refusing to believe a word of it. He looked at the trunk and his expression was a study. "Well, as to where this young person has gone," Wilkins said. "You see, this trunk being, as it were, her personal property, I've been asked to see that she gets it herself and----" "Where she's gone is no concern of ours. We don't know and we don't want to know!" said Mr. Bates. "The hussy went without a character and that's all we can tell you about her. And this here house is too full of trouble for me to be bothering with you about her trunk," concluded Mr. Bates. "Anything belonging to her gets out!" "Out!" Wilkins muttered. "Out!" said Mr. Bates, and pointed at the door. * * * * * Let us not forget what Anthony altogether forgot, to wit: the sinister warning of Hobart Hitchin in regard to shipping boxes, trunks or other containers that might well have held a dismembered body.